Originally published in September, October, November of 1934, reading from The Bloody Crown of Conan, Del Rey, 2003, pages 1-80, illustrated by Gary Gianni
People of the Black Circle is one of my very favorite Conan stories. It is a novella length work set in Howard’s version of pre-historic India. The prince of a warrior nation has died through vile sorcery, and his spunky sister and heiress decides to drive a hard bargain with a hard man—Conan—who is leading a tribe of wild horsemen. She is burning with the desire to avenge her brother and exact retribution from the Seers of a forbidden fortress high in the Himalayan Mountains and thinks she can play on the barbarian’s sense of honor and have him avenge her brother in return for the lives of his captured lieutenants.
Unfortunately for this feisty babe she soon becomes Conan’s property, slung over his shoulder as he takes her on a lifetime worth of harrowing adventure in two brief nights and a day. Howard uses the taut plotting that marked his 19th Century oriental adventures. The cast is large with numerous willful and cunning characters, three armies, a fortress city, a mountain village, and a mountaintop stronghold known as Yimsha, where the Black Seers practice their mind blasting magic.
Sorcery, not Magic Spells
The atmospherics are first rate R. E. H. all the way. But where he really shines in this novella is the sorcery. Howard’s idea of sorcery was far different than Tolkien’s, which was based on fairy tales. In fact, the wizard’s battle atop the tower at Isenguard between Gandalf and Sauruman in The Fellowship of The Ring movie was pure Howard, not Tolkien. Howard’s sorcery is part science, part mesmerism [which was believed to be a science in the 19th Century] and cultural. Conan is partially immune to the mind blasting mesmerism of the Black Seers because he is a meatheaded Westerner! His mind has not been prepared by a submission-based culture to fall easy prey to suggestion or command.
There are numerous vicious sorcerers in this rollicking yarn. The nastiest is The Master. Below is an excerpt from his torment of the Devi Yasmina:
“You are the devil.” She sobbed.
“Not I!” he laughed. “I was born on this planet, long ago. Once I was a common man, nor have I lost all human attributes in the numberless eons of my adept-ship. A human steeped in the dark arts is greater than a devil. I am of human origin, but I rule demons. You have seen the Lords of the Black Circle—it would blast your soul to hear from what far realm I summoned them and from what doom I guard them with encorcelled crystal and golden serpents.”
He laughed again. “And you, poor, silly thing! Plotting to send a hairy hill chief to storm Yimsha! …But for all of your stupidity, you are a woman fair to look upon. It is my whim to keep you for my slave.”
The daughter of a thousand proud emperors gasped with shame and fury at the word.
“You dare not!”
His mocking laughter cut her like a whip across her naked shoulders.
“The king dares not trample a worm in the road! Little fool, do you not realize that your royal pride is no more to me than a straw blown on the wind? I, who have known the kisses of the queens of hell!”
Howard gives disturbing insight into the minds of his sorcerers. They are real vested protagonists—not distant dark lords—made all the more frightening because of the feral turn of their nature occasioned by the immersion in the dark arts.
As for Conan, he is unable to best the sorcerers without the aid of one of their kind, which is a deft touch for Howard. He is also unable to deal with two armies once he regains control of his own ragtag force. In the end, after the Devi and he have formed a personal bond he is left with a question of honor—a layered test of his character. Three times he is tempted to give up his wild freedom for three different possible relationships with this remarkable woman. She even offers him the throne of her father’s empire.
Man and Woman
The Devi Yasmina is an interesting character. She begins the story as a dying man’s sister, then assumes the Deviship. She does not truly become Yasmina, the person, until she is abducted by Conan and taken away from civilization. When Conan, out of respect for her wishes and in accordance with his honor, releases her to return to the protection of her nation’s warriors [the Kyshatrias, or ‘warriors’.] she ceases being Yasmina, and becomes the Devi again, no longer the woman he came to know during their adventure.
Finally, after he rejects any compromise of his savage honor, she insists that he accept a fortune in gold for her ransom, showing her to be more honorable than most men. I will not ruin the ending with a quote of their final discourse. But the image Howard crafted with his description of Conan’s mannerisms as he stood at the head of a band of some 300 rogues and spurned a queen who was proposing marriage with 3,000 armored horseman at her back is classic, and sets this hero apart from most of his equivalents:
He made a savage, impatient gesture, shook the blood from his knife and thrust it back in its scabbard, wiping his hands on his mail… His eyes shone with fierce appreciation and admiration, and stepping back, he lifted his hand with a gesture that was like the assumption of kingship, indicating that her road was clear before her.
That is Robert E. Howard on how Man fell into the denatured pillow pit that now has him.
The Devi is seductive, compromising, Civilization.
Conan is defiant, uncompromising, Manhood.
Civilized Man is the Devi’s pampered tranny bitch, who holds no allure for her, as she stopped caring about him as soon as he cut his own balls off thinking it was what she wanted.
Conan is still out there somewhere, waiting to happen.
